Even Gods Bleed
by OwlManSamuel
Summary: The conclusion of the Second Tiberian War has come. With the dissolution of the Brotherhood into feuding states and a war-weary Global Defense Initiative, the entirety of the Earth is unprepared for the truth that comes to them. That they exist within the belly of a giant, in a galaxy that knows only war.


**First fanfiction, and a crossover at that. Criticism and critique will be both helpful and welcome going forward. This will break from the lore of the Command and Conquer series and you should not expect to see much from the canon characters. Otherwise, I'll try to remain faithful to the character of all C &C factions. All Warhammer characters will probably be OCs, but I may throw in a few references to established characters in the lore.**

 **With that out of the way, enjoy.**

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Major Lawrence Mundy eye's opened slowly as he felt the wheels of the APC slowly come to a stop. His groggy body coming to terms with being awake instead of asleep as light filtered through, showing the slowly falling particles of dust and giving the interior an almost antiquated look, which may not have been far off if the musty smell was indicative of the last instance it was used in any function beyond taking up storage space in some long forgotten assembly area.

Blinking as though he were an owl coming to his senses in the discolored light, he stretched and yawned. It was a knack of his, being able to awake right at the arrival to a destination, one in which his former squad mates over the years had rivaled him for, not that he felt pity for them. For him, it was just another perk to get a little extra nap time in between active deployments, not that he had been doing any for a great deal of time.

He had for months been stuck doing office work in some dusty corner of a half-forgotten GDI installation far from anywhere of any worth. It was a nice setup in all actuality, decent food, decent quarters, and regular sleep, all situated in the Blue Zone of Iceland. There was not much more a soldier really needed to operate, with one exception. It was the most boring and mundane work that he had ever been through.

It was all administrative stuff, and while anyone can value the notion of doing minimal work, it came at the expanse of that there nothing interesting. Datasheets, graphs, and the occasional coffee spill were all it was. Some people were made for that sort of thing, doing number crunching and the like, but Lawrence had always been somewhat of a prodigy when it came to getting away with not doing any menial labor, so having it change to something more mental based made it so he really couldn't get away with doing nothing.

At first, it had all sounded interesting in truth, some glib-tongued NCO had pitched off as the starting point of a space program, a real opportunity to become like one of those jump-jet marauder troops, except in space. The reality proved to be much different and devolved mostly into keeping an eye on number crunching computers and delivering the results.

The only satisfying thing about his assignment was reading about some of the savage ion storms that seemed to propagate from time to time in space, at least on those occasions he got an opportunity to look at the only now, a recent phenomenon, following forty years of a Tiberium contaminated Earth.

It had been a surprise when some MPs showed up and snatched him from his little office and without so much as a word stuck him into an Orca transport and flew him off before then tossing him into his current abode. Looking back, there was nothing of typical distinction that he had done within the last year that would render him a target of being either arrested or probed for information as far as Lawrence was aware.

Granted, it wasn't his first incident of being stuffed into a moving metal box and being shipped off for a debriefing, but that was years ago and had been all tied into a neat little bow at the end with promotions going around. So, in light of that, the only thing Lawrence could think was that this was probably some big fuckup and they probably nabbed the wrong guy, after all, it wouldn't be the first time that's happened in Earth's history.

He chuckled lightly to himself at the thought of how stupid the brass was going to look once they figured that out, the best part was that he wouldn't be taking any blame. Well, assuming he's right.

At that moment, the rear door of the APC came down without any prompt on his part and seeing that it was the end of the line, Lawrence got up from his seat and walked out somewhat leisurely while bracing his mind for what was to come.

He was greeted by the sight of some MPs, two to be exact, and two regular grunts wielding bulky assault rifles, outdated ones by the look of them.

To start things off, he greeted them, with a mocking smile, saying, "Lovely day isn't it."

It wasn't a lovely day at all, it was dusk. Furthermore, the sun, while it did shine its natural pigment, was obscured in a thick haze giving it a sickly light, which was only further heightened by the awful brown-tinted sky which seemed to permeate a smell of decay and burning ozone, an obvious sign of large Tiberian fields nearby.

His guards were not amused by his attempt to start a conversation and the grunts gestured for him to follow with the MPs waiting to follow up behind and cover the back of their little procession.

Lawrence obliged and followed, allowing silence to be all that was given between him and his escort, seeing that it would do a little benefit for himself on the current matter, though he did make an effort to check his surroundings.

To his left were rows upon rows of idle vehicles of nearly every descript in the GDI arsenal. Eight-wheeled amphibious Wolfhound APCs, the older Goliath MBTs with slightly corroded paint, newer Predator MBTs with Rail Accelerators, Guardian Point Defense Vehicles, and some extremely outdated Flak Tracks that were based on the even more so outdated Soviet ones of the Second World War yet somehow still found a purpose in this new age of advanced warfare. Beyond them had to be countless other trucks and vehicles of which Lawrence could not discern excepting a handful of Titan walkers, of whose performance record tended to be spotty. Even further was the colossal concrete fortifications surrounding the compound complete with guard towers of various armaments ranging from AA to rocket-based artillery guns. All in all, it was fairly typical as of any serious GDI installation that hadn't seen any real threat from Nod insurgents or militants.

To the right was a collection of buildings, mostly administrative by the looks of it with only the vehicle maintenance facilities being the abnormality. However, ahead was what appeared to be a large warehouse styled building with a colossal door. Painted stripes and hazard zones were all around the steel construction and if Lawrence were to hazard a guess, there was one mean Mammoth Mk. II in there. A more recent development in mechanized warfare especially in consideration to the original dogma of fast, light pincer type movements in addition to the matter of attempting to logistically sustain such a behemoth walker that should have went the way of some of the more wild speculative projects from the Second World War during the late 40s, courtesy of the Soviet Union.

To that building's immediate left was a major command and control facility, some twenty stories high by appearance, though it was hard to discern due to the low number of windows, a natural measure to increase building integrity for non-civilian structures. It was to this building that he was now approaching.

Keeping in pace with his escort, Lawrence eventually arrived in one of the entrances along the base of the structure, and after waiting for one of the attendant guards to swipe an ID, made his way in.

What Lawrence was greeted by was not nearly what he was expecting. There was no reception or anything of that nature and instead, various pipes ran to and fro in the small room across the walls and ceiling, barring the four doors, one for each cardinal direction. It was as if the building was trying to remind him that he really didn't have any sort of importance here, and neglect was the only thing coming for him.

Continuing forward, they proceeded up two flights of stairs and into a hall unadorned with any piping and in its place a broad golden colored stripe ran along the walls.

Heading right, he was shuttled through yet another door and then left behind without a word in a great auditorium-style room, only half occupied at the moment.

He was rather confused and did not know what in the hell was going on now. Perhaps he was wrong about the whole prisoner theory and in hindsight, he should have guessed as much. You don't typically transport a prisoner without any guards and without handcuffs.

As he tried to rectify his former theory, Lawrence chose to take a seat out of his own volition next to a burly looking corporal in battle fatigues, a stark contrast from Lawrence's officer uniform.

Waiting silently for a moment, Lawrence could not help but get the impression that he was unwanted by the corporal as though he was in some manner committing a sin by his mere presence. There wasn't any verifiable sign beyond a natural grumpiness, but Lawrence couldn't shake the feeling. In an effort to undo this, Lawrence decided to attempt to start a conversation.

"So I don't suppose you know what this is all about?" He intoned.

The corporal regarded Lawrence, then spoke, "Sir, I don't really know, and I don't honestly really care so long as it doesn't end with me doing a bunch of paper shuffling and pen shifting." The fashion of his speech was slow and well-articulated, though perhaps a little begrudging.

Getting a feeling that the conversation was at an end even before it really began, Lawrence refrained from speaking any further and turned to his inner musings that would make him noteworthy for being included on a matter that was beginning to look to involve dozens of GDI personal ranging from medics to officers and also differentiating in origin from the Northern Caucasus Mountains all the way to the Southwest of the former United States proper, if the unit patches were anything to go by. It was rather odd to the say the least. However looking back, there was a particular event in the past that Lawrence knew was off the radar in terms of public knowledge, which may in some way be part of the reason for dragging enlisted from all over the world.

When he was still an infantryman, a Gunnery Sergeant during his tenure in the North American branch of the Global Defense Initiative, there was a rather extraordinary operation. Put into action to fight off Nod militants in a delaying action somewhere in the Southwestern desert of the former United States proper, Lawrence had found himself eventually shuffled back into the rear lines after sustaining moderate combat wounds from shrapnel. Then, after Nod attacks were renewed, he was forced back into the front lines until they closed in around a massive structure, an extraterrestrial ship if the rumors were true at the time.

Fortune favored the GDI troops and they were able to fight off the Nod assault until reinforcements arrived, but by some manner of circumstances, he was chosen to actually enter the supposed alien vessel. His theory at the time was that if he died from going in by some mishap, he wouldn't be missed in many differing respects. Its walls were sleek and the color of obsidian tinged with violet lights all over, emanating from some unknown source.

He had this feeling of uncanniness, though he couldn't pin the source, and his fellow soldiers at that time felt much the same way.

Entering within, it was much the same, though the geometry and architecture seemed to scream out to him of being foreign. After spending only a brief time of patrolling the ship, looking for potential hostiles, he was removed from the bowels and put under various medical examinations looking for any possible abnormalities.

Evidently, he was fortunate in that he did not have any of the symptoms that so many of the others shared, like that of horrific nightmares, nausea, headaches, or other more exotic manifestations.

It was extraordinarily peculiar, and it only seemed to happen to those who had spent time inside the presence of the ship, with the only cure being removal from the area.

However the whole mess was eventually sorted out, and eventually, some workaround was made to deal with the problems that were coming about, both in efforts going into the ship and in dealing with some of the anomalies around it, of which Lawrence had no knowledge of the details.

The result of this entire operation saw a good deal of matters pushed under the metaphorical rug with promotions and reassignments going around to keep everyone compliant with the matter. People around the world were scared, adding aliens to the mix wouldn't make it any better, and especially since no one had any idea what kind of aliens they were.

Were they benevolent or would they just end up exterminating all people on the planet?

Lawrence guessed that no answer was forthcoming, or that they were leaning more onto the side of exterminating everything, seeing as how none of it had become public knowledge yet.

Since then, Lawrence had managed to nab his own promotion into becoming a commissioned officer and had managed to claw his way up the ranks slowly through a little bit of guile and feigning hard work until he got pushed into his current occupation. Well, that is until now, depending on what comes out of the situation he found himself in now.

However, coming back to the present, Lawrence decided to try prodding the corporal with a single question on his recent thoughts.

"Say, were you ever present around the Cuidad Juárez area about five years ago?" He inquired, being sure not to let on to too many specifics

"Cuidad Juárez sir? Yes, I was there." The corporal replied looking up, the expression of mild surprise on his face. "I was actually just thinking about the… particulars that happened there." He continued as his mood seemed to lighten.

"Yes, that crash site was a nasty brawl wasn't it. I take it you were doing grunt work like myself at the time?" Lawrence inquired as he clasped his hands and bent forward, placing his elbows on his knees as he got a good look at the corporal's face. He did not recognize the corporal as necessarily being there, although it was still very likely that he was, just on a different side of the battlefield.

"I apologize, sir, I should have guessed that you earned your way up to being a commissioned officer. Guess my gut instinct was wrong this time." The corporal replied in a tone and manner indicating that what he said was, at least at the surface, genuine.

Coming into a sort of unspoken treaty of sorts, the two discussed, without directly mentioning the crash site, their respective times during the duration of the operation. The corporal, by his own account, fought from one of the several hastily dug trenches surrounding the vessel, and when the Nod militants got desperate because GDI reinforcements were inbound, they attempted to storm the trenches. At great expense to themselves, they were able to actually reach them and the corporal, who mentioned that his name was Marcus Smith, bayoneted one. According to Marcus, perhaps the only time in the last decade that the bayonet mounts on their rifles actually got any use for their intended purpose.

After finishing one another's stories of their involvement with the incident that they were mutually present at, their conversation proceeded onto more present matters. What both one was doing before getting nabbed and sent here, and why exactly they had been dragged here alongside the dozens of others.

Shortly thereafter, more personnel began to fill the room, evidently just arriving from a dinner if the boasts of the quality of the food here were to be believed from shameless eavesdropping.

After a time, the room finally quieted down, and the lights dimmed excepting those on the stage directed at a podium. Upon a soundless queue, an officer came from the side of the stage without any formal ceremony and began giving an introduction to the matter at hand.

It more or less came out to a far wordier way of saying that they were sorry for dragging everyone here on a moment's notice and that their questions will be answered in short time, without the ceremony of course as now it was far more prudent to be practical and efficient than formal for the situation. Then, the officer went on to introduce their primary orator on what was so important for everyone to be here for, and his name was Brigadier General Winfield Sherman.

The War Pig, as the Brigadier General was called by the Brotherhood of Nod before the term was used by GDI personal and even the man himself in mockery, was a semi-legend. Kane had come back and started the Second Tiberian War following his supposed death by Ion Cannon strike in the first war. So the natural reaction was that if once wasn't enough, it was best to try again. This is where War Pig Sherman came in.

Out in the field, leading troops as a colonel at the time deep in enemy territory, Sherman had come upon a strongly fortified Nod installation in Africa, not too far from Forgotten territory. It was yet another uncharted base, but as luck would have it, Kane had decided to pay a visit. Not expecting to find such a facility, GDI troops were numerically and qualitatively outmatched, and so Kane had decided to give Sherman a call.

The conversation, assuming all the renditions of the story were true, ran down along the lines that Kane had, over Sherman's tenure as a forward commander, been impressed with his work, showing admirable competence, especially in recent incursions into various Red Zones. Some of the more questionable dialogue was rumored to be about who Sherman should be fighting for, why he's fighting, and some other general taunts about being so near to glory yet so far.

The War Pig evidently did not take kindly to the remarks and organized his task force to cut the head off the scorpion for good. Using an unnaturally convenient ion storm as cover, he used the interference to ensure both that he would not receive orders to pull back.

Fortune smiled upon his decision as the ion storm, masked his radio signals, and hindered the Nod efforts to organize and direct a response to his own well-disciplined and experienced strike force.

In a matter of hours, they had breached the compound and laid siege the temple there, laying waste to it with the extensive bombardment of anything on hand. Evidentially, despite the soundness of the structure, they were able to destroy it and with it, Kane. However, no corpse was recovered, as GDI had to pull out in haste due to Nod reinforcements and the subsequent ending of the ion storm which prompted an ion cannon strike on the temple.

The final transmission gave out by the Messiah to Sherman, supposedly proved the man's death. The transmission and the final words of Kane have however remained secret for unknown reasons.

The following weeks saw Colonel Sherman reprimanded, then rewarded, and finally praised after the news went public of his impossible exploit. Less than a thousand GDI troops were able to storm through an estimated 8,000 Nod militants and were able to kill Kane, even if it was due to yet another ion cannon strike.

The whereabouts of how it was exactly done are still classified by GDI higher-ups though, and Nod has yet to leak out what exactly happened, instead opting to put a substantial ransom on the now Brigadier General's head alongside propaganda detailing him as a savage warmonger.

Ironically, despite the ransom, Nod dogma still advocated that Kane is not dead and that the situation was merely a setback. How this may be so, had yet to be explained.

So when Winfield Sherman came onto the stage, he had the entire room's undivided attention. It wasn't often that someone would get to hear from such a both, famous and infamous man without a prepared script and preview screening on public television.

From what was said, it mostly confirmed both Lawrence's and Trajan's suspicions. It was aliens by all accounts, they were spotted in space using specific highly-classified instruments and then further confirmed with more conventional methods trying to pass through a space-based ion storm a few million kilometers from Earth. They had eyes on them right now and would try to communicate once the aliens passed through the interference caused by the intermittent space-based ion storm.

With that said, the speech moved into the realm of what they were all here to do. According to Winfield Sherman, or rather, his script on the podium, they were all drafted for relative experience in various fields in the coming weeks when dealing with the new visitors. They were all the ground contingent of the military, professional soldiers, officers, and commanders. The military aspect was here so that if they proved hostile if their visitors decided to come down to the surface they would have something of a more developed response beyond "shoot at it."

After that, the Brigadier General notified his audience that he had several other near-identical speeches to give right after this particular one and that his closing would be kept short.

"Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and don't do anything extraordinarily stupid." Were the final words before he left the podium and let the same officer who had introduced him retake the podium.

What came next could be best described as a blur for Lawrence. The female officer on stage made it clear that as of this moment, any and all ranks of personnel were to be restricted and that they were all to be reorganized into the classification of "BO-9 Specialist Operators," and that the only superiors that were to be had were a select number of individuals that would be given out as a dossier for all present and those who were selectively promoted under the classification. Any and all ranks would be reinstated at a time as seen fit when "Special Operations" would no longer be needed.

Then, they were all marshaled out and moved to a greater commons-styled area where they were organized into groups based on what there assigned tasks would be.

Most groups were to organize into the academic side, wherein they would learn everything they possibly can from a military standpoint of their visitors and would attempt to shuffle the information around where it would be needed. Their numbers seemed rather disproportionate but once the information either went public or the necessity to mobilize military forces would be needed, they would go on to instruct as many other GDI personnel on the matter as possible all across the world.

The rest would comprise of military escorts and be part of the welcoming party, on the chance that one would be needed. Lawrence found himself among this number alongside Marcus Smith, undoubtedly because of their mutually shared experience of one particular alien crash site.

Before they were ushered onto a general tour of their quarters and where exactly they would be working for the duration of their participation, Marcus spoke a phrase that would come to be well-used in the coming weeks.

"Shit just got a hell of a lot more interesting on our planet."

Lawrence gave Marcus a look that communicated the mutual feeling on the matter.

As they proceeded among their group of perhaps three dozen, Lawrence found himself engaging once more in conversation with Marcus, speculating on the aliens primarily, until they had reached the armory where Lawrence uttered his final words on the matter to Marcus.

"If we think shit's getting interesting, I wonder what the hell they are thinking about us."


End file.
